What is enum?
1) Enums in Java are type-safe and has there own name-space. It means your enum will have a type for example "Currency"
in below example and you can not assign any value other than specified in Enum Constants.
public enum Currency {PENNY, NICKLE, DIME, QUARTER};
Currency coin = Currency.PENNY;
coin = 1; //compilation error
2) Enum in Java are reference type like class or interface and you can define constructor,
methods and variables inside java Enum which makes it more powerful than Enum in C and C++ as shown in next example of Java Enum type.
3) You can specify values of enum constants at the creation time as shown in below example:
public enum Currency {PENNY(1), NICKLE(5), DIME(10), QUARTER(25)};
But for this to work you need to define a member variable and a constructor because PENNY (1) is actually calling a constructor which accepts int value ,
see below example.
public enum Currency {
PENNY(1), NICKLE(5), DIME(10), QUARTER(25);
private int value;
private Currency(int value) {
this.value = value;
}
};
Constructor of enum in java must be private any other access modifier will result in compilation error.
Now to get the value associated with each coin you can define a public getValue() method inside java enum like any normal java class.
Also semi colon in the first line is optional.
4) Enum constants are implicitly static and final and can not be changed once created. For example below code of java enum will result in compilation error:
Currency.PENNY = Currency.DIME;
The final field EnumExamples.Currency.PENNY cannot be re assigned.
5) Enum in java can be used as an argument on switch statment and with "case:" like int or char primitive type.
This feature of java enum makes them very useful for switch operations. Let’s see an example of how to use java
enum inside switch statement:
Currency usCoin = Currency.DIME;
switch (usCoin) {
case PENNY:
System.out.println("Penny coin");
break;
case NICKLE:
System.out.println("Nickle coin");
break;
case DIME:
System.out.println("Dime coin");
break;
case QUARTER:
System.out.println("Quarter coin");
}
from JDK 7 onwards you can also String in Switch case in Java code.
6) Since constants defined inside Enum in Java are final you can safely compare them using "==" equality operator as shown in following example of Java Enum:
Currency usCoin = Currency.DIME;
if(usCoin == Currency.DIME){
System.out.println("enum in java can be compared using ==");
}
By the way comparing objects using == operator is not recommended, Always use equals() method or compareTo() method to compare Objects.
7) Java compiler automatically generates static values() method for every enum in java. Values() method returns array of Enum constants
in the same order they have listed in Enum and you can use values() to iterate over values of Enum in Java as shown in below example:
for(Currency coin: Currency.values()){
System.out.println("coin: " + coin);
}
And it will print:
coin: PENNY
coin: NICKLE
coin: DIME
coin: QUARTER
Notice the order its exactly same with defined order in enums.
8) In Java Enum can override methods also. Let’s see an example of overriding toString() method inside Enum
in Java to provide meaningful description for enums constants.
Example:
public enum Currency {
@Override
public String toString() {
switch (this) {
case PENNY:
System.out.println("Penny: " + value);
break;
case NICKLE:
System.out.println("Nickle: " + value);
break;
case DIME:
System.out.println("Dime: " + value);
break;
case QUARTER:
System.out.println("Quarter: " + value);
}
return super.toString();
}
};
And here is how it looks like when displayed:
Currency usCoin = Currency.DIME;
System.out.println(usCoin);
output:
Dime: 10
9) Two new collection classes EnumMap and EnumSet are added into collection package to support Java Enum.
These classes are high performance implementation of Map and Set interface in Java and we should use this whenever there is any opportunity.
10) You can not create instance of enums by using new operator in Java because constructor of Enum in Java can only be private
and Enums constants can only be created inside Enums itself.
11) Instance of Enum in Java is created when any Enum constants are first called or referenced in code.
12) Enum in Java can implement the interface and override any method like normal class It’s also worth noting that Enum
in java implicitly implement both Serializable and Comparable interface. Let's see and example of how to implement interface using Java Enum:
public enum Currency implements Runnable{
PENNY(1), NICKLE(5), DIME(10), QUARTER(25);
private int value;
............
@Override
public void run() {
System.out.println("Enum in Java implement interfaces");
}
}
13) You can define abstract methods inside Enum in Java and can also provide different implementation for different instances of enum in java.
Let’s see an example of using abstract method inside enum in java
public enum Currency implements Runnable{
PENNY(1) {
@Override
public String color() {
return "copper";
}
}, NICKLE(5) {
@Override
public String color() {
return "bronze";
}
}, DIME(10) {
@Override
public String color() {
return "silver";
}
}, QUARTER(25) {
@Override
public String color() {
return "silver";
}
};
private int value;
public abstract String color();
private Currency(int value) {
this.value = value;
}
..............
}
In this example since every coin will have different color we made the color() method abstract and let each instance of Enum to define there own color.
You can get color of any coin by just calling color() method as shown in below example of java enum:
System.out.println("Color: " + Currency.DIME.color());
Enum Java valueOf example
- One of my reader pointed out that I have not mention about valueOf method of enum in Java, which is used to convert String to enum in java.
- “You could also include valueOf() method of enum in java which is added by compiler in any enum along with values() method.
- Enum valueOf() is a static method which takes a string argument and can be used to convert a String into enum.
- One think though you would like to keep in mind is that valueOf(String) method of enum will
- throw "Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: No enum const class" if you supply any string other than enum values.
